


marigold

by smokerings



Category: The Front Bottoms
Genre: Haircuts, Tour life, mat is having a Feel and brian is a dork, sellachich
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 23:03:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5182955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokerings/pseuds/smokerings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>brian needs a haircut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	marigold

**Author's Note:**

> holy shit even though i've been reading it for years i don't think i've ever posted a fanfic before!!!
> 
> title is from marigold by mother falcon. they're worth checking out.
> 
> i wrote this in like an hour at 1 am last night so please be forgiving of spelling and/or syntax errors.

Mat's never cut hair drunk before. Mat's never cut hair before period. But when Brian hands him a pair of safety scissors and fixes him with a look equal parts steely determination and cool confidence, well. Mat's never had an easy time saying no to him.  
Brian settles into the folding chair he's positioned to face the bathroom mirror. He runs his fingers through the hair hanging over his ear, following its slight wave. "You got this, man. Just hack some of this shit off; it's so fucking long right now, jesus." He mumbles.  
Mat's too busy trying to adjust his eyes and bring the back of Brian's head into focus to respond. He's pretty scared of fucking up, but he's also pretty drunk, so the fear isn't coming into play as much as it would be if he were sober. Whether that's a good thing or not is, of course, up to interpretation.  
"What the hell are you guys doing in here?" Ciaran appears in the doorway with a beer in his hand and a dazed expression on his face.  
Brian turns his head sharply and beams in his classic sunshine boy wonder way. "I'm finally going to be beautiful, C!"  
"It's about time." Ciaran says flatly.  
Brian erupts into laughter, squirming so much that cutting his hair would be impossible even if Mat could remember how scissors worked.  
After an adjustment of the ever-present baseball cap that barely reveals the blond curls atop his head, Ciaran takes a sip of his beer. "If what I think is happening is happening right now, this opens up a whole new genre of terrible ideas, even for you two." He says. Mat's smile is of a small nature- it would hardly be a whisper if it were to speak.  
"There's only one bathroom in this house. And if I'm twice as drunk as I think I am I'm gonna need to use it eventually, so don't monopolize it for too long."  
"Aye-aye, C!" Brian yells. He nearly falls out of his chair when he tries to give Ciaran an exaggerated salute.  
Ciaran laughs and slinks off, leaving them with nothing but the scissors and the mirror and the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling that buzzes and casts cartoonish shadows on their faces.  
Mat doesn't realize he had leaned forward and grabbed onto the back of the chair until Brian let his head fall backwards to look up at him. They were really close. From here, Mat could pretend he was seeing all the flecks of not-brown in Brian's eyes for the first time. He could pretend the lighting was good enough and he wasn't just filling in the blanks from all the times he'd already memorized them before.  
Brian's voice is softer than it's probably been in a long time when he speaks. "Alright, Uychich. Make me pretty."  
Mat lets all his breath fan out onto Brian's face. It didn't even register in his mind that he was holding it.  
He indulges and let himself stare a little longer before standing up straight, sliding his vision along Brian's jawline and his cupid's bow. The two or three hairs here and there he missed the last time he shaved.  
Once he's pulled himself away and let himself blink the unsightly feelings out of his eyes and into his peripheral vision where they belong, Mat gets serious about the hair styling. He can't tell if it took him longer to get the right hold on the scissors than it would've if he wasn't mostly drunk and slightly high, but it doesn't really matter, does it? Nothing does. They're on tour, for Christ's sake. A few twenty-somethings with way less responsibility than most people their age, all wallowing in their own filth and occasionally playing music to rooms full of people just as lost and scared as they are. It's a sweet fucking deal. Ask anyone.  
And before Mat knows it, he's snipping. Trapping wavy brown locks between the two silver blades and ending their reign over the nape of Brian's neck, letting them fall to the floor without sparing a thought to how annoying it'll be to clean up. He treats it just like everything else that matters; jumping in head first and pretending everything's gonna be alright no matter what. And it always is, sometimes even when it isn't.  
Mat can feel the reflection of Brian's eyes on him from the mirror. It makes him a little nervous, if he feels like being honest with himself on that mostly unremarkable February night. Brian does that to him, for whatever reason- makes him feel distinctly human and amazingly unearthly at the same time. He tries to concentrate anyway.  
It only takes a few more seconds to even out the back. He expects to be done after making the line where Brian's hair ends solid and consistent across the back of his neck, but when Mat looks up at Brian's reflection he can tell the front needs a little work.  
"Here, I gotta-" Mat has to squeeze by Brian's shoulders to get in front of him in the cramped space. It's uncomfortable, but Mat got good at working around that type of thing a while ago. It's sort of in his job description.  
He crouches down so he's level with Brian, and again he's met with the same face that'll never get old even though he's seen it a million times.  
Brian opens his mouth and smiles at him. There aren't a lot of things on earth like this, Mat thinks. Being so close to a smile like that.  
Mat nudges Brian's head with three fingers on his cheek to straighten him out before getting to work on his bangs. He grabs a section from just above his eyebrow and cuts it off carefully. A few tiny hairs fall on Brian's cheek, making him twitch and scrunch his face up.  
"Oh, sorry." Mat mutters under his breath. "I'm not being super careful about the... refuse."  
Brian laughs with glittering eyes. "The refuse?"  
"That's probably not the right word for it, but-"  
Then Brian's kissing him.  
It's a hard press against his lips, a nose resting parallel to his own, fit together just as perfect as he always imagined. He cups Brian's cheek with his hand that isn't holding the scissors, anchoring himself to his best friend and reality. Which, what's the difference, anyway? Something in Mat's chest takes flight and soars high above the clouds.  
Brian makes a desperate sound that starts in his chest and ends in Mat's mouth. They move their lips in a dysfunctional tandem, a rhythm that's barely scraping by.  
It's so, so perfect. More perfect than he ever could've imagined. Mat doesn't want it to end.  
But it does. All too soon, in a way that makes Mat think he would've missed its absence even if it had been there for years.  
He opens his eyes. In front of him he finds Brian, delicate and beautiful with his soft angles and rough edges. With his uneven bangs. "Bri, I-"  
Brian shushes him gently. His eyes are still closed, the lids resting shut by no other force than gravity. "You're perfect, Mat. Now fix my hair."


End file.
